-
The Meanings of Life
Aeon Magazine: Parents often say: ‘I just want my children to be happy.’ It is unusual to hear: ‘I just want my children’s lives to be meaningful,’ yet that’s what most of us seem to want for ourselves. We fear meaninglessness. We fret about the ‘nihilism’ of this or that aspect of our culture. When we lose a sense of meaning, we get depressed. What is this thing we call meaning, and why might we need it so badly? Let’s start with the last question. To be sure, happiness and meaningfulness frequently overlap. Perhaps some degree of meaning is a prerequisite for happiness, a necessary but insufficient condition.
-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Genes for Emotion-Enhanced Remembering Are Linked to Enhanced Perceiving Rebecca M. Todd, Daniel J. Müller, Daniel H. Lee, Amanda Robertson, Tayler Eaton, Natalie Freeman, Daniela J. Palombo, Brian Levine, and Adam K. Anderson A deletion variant of the ADRA2B gene has been linked to emotional enhancement of memory and susceptibility to traumatic memories. The authors investigated whether this gene variant is also related to affective biases, particularly for negative stimuli. Participants were genotyped for the ADRA2B gene and took part in an attentional-blink task that contained positive, negative, and neutral words.
-
MacArthur fellow Angela Duckworth: Test kids’ grit, not just their IQ
The Washington Post: Think smarts are all you need to succeed in school? Think again, says Angela Duckworth, a research psychologist and one of the recent MacArthur Foundation fellows. In her research, Duckworth examines two traits that predict success: grit, the tendency to sustain interest and effort in pursuing long-term goals, and self control, the regulation of behavioral, emotional and attentional impulses. To Duckworth, grit allows people to pursue challenges over the course of years. Self control, on the other hand, helps us battle “hourly temptations.” Duckworth gave a TEDTalk on grit in which she stressed the importance of determination in academic achievement.
-
Why Eye Contact Can Fail To Win People Over
NPR: Pop psychology holds that to connect with someone, you should look deep into their eyes. The more you look, the more persuasive you'll be. But that may work only when your audience already agrees with you. ... "Eye contact is clearly used in many situations to signal attraction, love and even agreement," Frances Chen, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the study, told Shots. But forcing someone to look into your eyes could backfire if you're trying to change their opinion, Chen says. "Think about parents saying, 'Look at me when I'm talking to you!' " The study was published online in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: NPR
-
Losing Is Good for You
The New York Times: As children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program. ... Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.
-
Identifying People by Their Bodies When Faces Are No Help
Every day we recognize friends, family, and co-workers from afar -- even before we can distinctly see a face. New research reveals that when facial features are difficult to make out, we readily use information about someone’s body to identify them -- even when we don’t know we’re doing so. “Psychologists and computer scientists have concentrated almost exclusively on the role of the face in person recognition,” explains lead researcher, Allyson Rice of the University of Texas at Dallas.
